1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a wireless communication architecture, including a signal processing system that allows virtualization of the Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) Layer between the physical transmission layer and the user application and operating system layers to ensure their complete independence and openness in both architectures and operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Commercial wireless mobile communications have been developed for almost thirty years, and played a special role in today's information and communication technology industries. Since last year, the global number of mobile phones has exceeded the number of computers, and continues to increase rapidly. Basically, the mobile wireless terminal device has become part of our life, same as the Internet, it will continue to play more important role on the worldwide basis.
However, the conventional mobile terminal device including the mobile phone system has many technical limitations which become the critical issues for the future development. The major problems of the conventional mobile terminal system include:                a) System architecture is very closed. Every mobile phone vendor has its own architecture and all systems modules come from same vendor or its partners only.        b) Every mobile phone is limited to its specific wireless standards or called Radio Transmission Technologies (RTTs), and does not allow flexibility in selecting different RTTs.        c) Some multi-standards mobile phone is just coupling several separate RTTs into the system which consumes much power and system resources, and unused RTTs can not be removed from the system.        d) Every mobile phone is locked to its own operating system (OS), and do not allow any applications if their OS is different from its own OS.        e) The whole system architecture relies directly or indirectly on the physical radio transmission layer.        
Because of these architectural problems, the mobile phone becomes one of the least cost-effective consumer products based on the report from 2007 World Wireless Congress. The user can not upgrade or improve the mobile phone due to its closed architecture and lock to specific RTT and OS platform.
The mobile applications are facing tremendous development and movement across the global and will continue to evolve from a traditional voice-centric service to the multimedia services including voice, data, message and video. These multimedia services may run on same OS platform or come from different OS platforms developed by third party vendor or ported from other system platforms such as computer system. Developing all mobile applications upon same single OS platform is very costly and do not make any sense in the commercial business market.
Meanwhile, these multimedia applications require the underlying wireless transmission to be broadband, high-speed and full mobile. However, from the wireless communication's point of view, no single wireless standard (or called radio transmission technology) can provide both broadband high-speed and seamless mobility features based on the communication theory.
Therefore, in order to support the multimedia applications for the mobile phone device, multiple RTTs must work together as a converged radio platform rather than a single RTT system.
Various solutions have been proposed to solve the above problems in the mobile communications. These include Software Defined Radio (SDR), Multi-Radios Platform (MRP), Google Android Platform and Symbian OS, etc. Each of these systems is described briefly below.
Software Defined Radio (SDR)
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a broadband radio in which the preset operating parameters including inter alia frequency range, modulation type, and/or output power limitations can be reset or altered by software. Basically, SDR is first a broadband transceiver, then is a radio which can operate in set frequency point and set wireless standard by software.
While SDR is a very good military wireless communication solution, it does not make sense in commercial wireless communications because of several critical issues:                a) SDR is a broadband transceiver which is too expensive in commercial and consumer market;        b) SDR consumes too much spectrum in constructing the broadband radio transceiver;        c) SDR does not mean open system architecture which is extensible, removable and upgradeable;        
Commercial mobile communications demand cost-effective and spectrum-efficient wireless transmission, and therefore the radio must be narrowband in nature with enough flexibility in changing the RTT in case of need. In this way, the cost of mobile terminal device, the mobile service and the spectrum utilized can be minimized.
Therefore, SDR can not solve any problem as listed above (for commercial communications).
Multi-Radios Platform (MRP)
In order to support multi-radios for commercial mobile communications, many companies developed MRP products including those from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Ericsson with chips from Infineon Technologies, Texas Instruments, Samsung Semiconductors, etc. Taking Nokia 6680 mobile phone as an example, these MRP solutions do not solve the problem effectively because:                a) MRP is just coupling several separate Radio transceivers into one RF (radio frequency) body which consumes much power;        b) MRP can not remove unused radio(s) from the system as they come together from the production;        c) MRP is hard to support too many radios (limit to 2-3) due to limitation in power and processing resources;        d) MRP systems are fully relying on the specific RTTs supported;        e) MRP system is not designed on open architecture platform which means all the MRP modules are from same vendor, and not open to users.        
Therefore, as the user switches among different multimedia applications in different service areas, this MRP system does not work properly.
Google Android Platform
After WAP (wireless application protocol) Forum, OMA (open mobile alliance) and NGMN (next generation mobile networks), Google launched the OHA (open handset alliance) with focus on its proposed Android platform in constructing the open mobile application platform.
But, the Android Platform is just another new OS (operating system) platform based on Linux Kernel, without providing capability in supporting other OS platforms, or mapping to other OS platforms.
Furthermore, the Android platform is only focusing on the user application layer and high-end of the OS layer, without providing solutions to be independent to the mobile phone system level and transmission level. While Android assumes the underlying layers should be independent to the above layers, the fact is that wireless lower layers are much different from the wireline lower layers because at least, the wireless transmission bandwidth is much limited than that of wireline transmission.
Therefore, Android Platform does not help solve the problems because one single OS (whether comes from Google or Microsoft or others) can not support so many rapidly increasing mobile applications across the global in long term.
Symbian OS
Same as Google Android Platform, and also as Microsoft Mobile OS platform, a single Symbian OS platform, such as Symbian OS v8.0 by Symbian Software Ltd, UK, will not solve the problems for the future mobile communications requiring various multimedia applications across different OS platforms.
General Shortcomings of the Prior Art
All of these known systems fail to meet one or more of the following goals:                a) To provide a converged multiple radio transmissions platform which should be extensible, removable, upgradeable and cost-effective;        b) To provide portability of the operating system across a wide range of wireless system platforms;        c) To provide a solution to make the application and OS layers to be independent to the wireless transmission layer;        d) To maximize performance by using the underlying wireless hardware as much as possible.        
This invention provides a system that achieves these goals well.